Why they rank here
Bobby Jones is the greatest amateur who ever lived and, to many, simply one of the greatest golfers of all. He never turned professional, yet between 1923 and 1930 he won 7 of the era's major championships and, in 1930, completed the only single-season Grand Slam in history: the U.S. Open, U.S. Amateur, Open Championship and British Amateur, then dubbed the Impregnable Quadrilateral. He won four U.S. Opens and five U.S. Amateurs. Having conquered everything at 28, he retired from competition, co-founded Augusta National and created the Masters Tournament in 1934. A lawyer who played only part-time, Jones defined sportsmanship, once famously calling a penalty on himself that cost him a U.S. Open, and he remains the enduring moral touchstone of the game and its ideal of the gentleman competitor.
Career profile
Each bar shows how this athlete compares with the strongest in our all-time list for that metric.